Cold Snap Has O.C. Residents Running for Cover

By RAY TESSLER and DAVID HALDANE

Dec. 8, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Southern Californians can endure ground-ripping earthquakes, roaring brush fires and monster-storm surf, but just let the thermometer drop to the low 30s and suddenly it’s like The End is near.

Their feet strangely go crunch on frosted grass and they snort vapors from their drippy blue noses. They frantically don layers of detested wool clothing. They limply comply when their dogs ask . . . no, demand, in--not only into the house, but into the bed blankets at night.

Monday morning was cold. It was 32 in San Juan Capistrano, 34 in Fullerton and 33 in Burbank.

This morning, more of the same was forecast, with a projected low of 29 degrees in Mission Viejo and San Clemente, 30 in Dana Point and 34 in Placentia.

Compare those numbers to New York City, where Central Park posted an amazing 59-degree low and a 75-degree high Monday. That’s a real blow to people here who always rub it in when they’re (usually) strutting around in shorts in December while snow-bound Easterners are struggling to locate their cars and their pulses.

“We have thin blood,” Brian Lahr of San Clemente explained without remorse or shame.

Yes, we are a population of weather wimps.

While Lahr was wrapped in a jacket Monday afternoon, Stephanie Sabin was surviving with no problem in a miniskirt. Of course, Sabin is from Rochester, N.Y., which makes the big difference in such matters, and moved to Orange County in March.

“This [cold] doesn’t bother me in the least,” said Sabin, who works at a financial firm in San Juan Capistrano. If she were back home now, “I’d be letting the car warm up for 15 minutes, shoveling off 3 inches of show, and there are all the accidents.”

The unusually intense cold appears to have caused no damage to county agriculture so far and little trouble for homeowners, except for fallen trees and broken branches from the strong winds.

The heaviest toll is on peoples’ comfort--and the California lifestyle, which holds that it’s perfectly correct etiquette to be hot-tubbing this time of year.

Relief is coming, as early as this week, with warmer temperatures just around the bend.

Despite the slight warming trend, “it’s still cold by California standards,” said Jeff House of WeatherData, which provides weather information to The Times.

In contrast to Monday’s cold, it was an unseasonably warm 50 degrees in Boston, for example. New York City’s 59-degree low compares to the normal low in the upper 20s.

“It was a beautiful day in New York City,” House said Monday. “All the East Coast is running warm today.”

How nice.

But it’s not going to last. While Southern California temperatures will get up into the 70s by Wednesday, New York City’s high temperatures will hit the high 40s at best.

Nobody thought much about that on Monday. What numbed people’s tender little cheeks in Southern California was a bullying cold front from the Gulf of Alaska and more bone-chilling winds creeping in from the east.

Even animals know when it’s time for an Irish coffee. And of course they have such subtle ways of letting their people know what they want.

Jim Frohling’s dog, Lady, comes in at night but “she’s not too anxious to go out in the morning.”

Veterinarians say the owners of pets, especially puppies and older animals, should be careful about exposure to cold climate.

“It’s common sense. If it’s cold for us, it’s cold for them,” said Dr. Gary Johnson of the Arroyo Pet Clinic in Lake Forest.

Explanations for why the temperature dipped so low fails to really mollify miserable people. Mark Twain, perhaps America’s most brilliant bad-attitude case, was right when he declared that everybody complains about the weather but nobody does much about it.

This may not be suffering of biblical proportions, but hear the testimony of John Rivera of Garden Grove.

“Man, I got up, I got dressed, and when I was riding my bike to work my hands were freezing,” he said. “I had to stop at a McDonald’s for a tissue to stop my nose from running.”

Still, pretense and denial are part of the Southern California aura. That’s why some people were wearing shorts and shivering on the windy Huntington Beach Pier while others were bundled up in jackets.

Of the two distinct groups, the latter looked happier and, on the whole, perhaps better adjusted to reality.

Jim and Donita Jarnigan, formerly of Huntington Beach, are back for a visit after retiring to Palm Desert four years ago.

“It was frigid,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been that cold.”

Added his wife: “The only time I can remember it getting this cold is when it killed my begonias.”

Some county residents took the unusual cold with circumspection, like Anna Greenwald, outdoors during a break from her job at Ruby’s on the pier.

“I get tired of it being hot all the time,” she said. “I like [the cold] because it’s clear.”

Still, the ultimate, if unintentional, condemnation of Californians’ collective constitution came from Jan Sylvester, who recently moved to Orange County from Ohio.

“We don’t call this cold,” she said. “We call this a nice brisk day. We’re just thrilled to see the sun.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Still Chilly

Some parts of Orange County were expected to have temperatures in the 20s Monday night and this morning. Even some beach communities were to barely hit the 30-degree mark. Predicted temperatures for Monday night/Tuesday morning:

Location: Low temperature

Aliso Viejo: 41

Anaheim: 35

Brea: 39

Buena Park: 35

Canyons (Silverado and Trabuco Canyons): 28

Capistrano Beach: 30

Corona del Mar: 40

Costa Mesa: 35

Cypress: 38

Dana Point: 30

Fountain Valley: 43